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Janet Gifford

Curing Boredom ... one click at a time

So - this happened this week and it got me to thinking about human behavior in general, and human behavior right now as we're all at home. Challenged by Coronavirus's hold on our every-day life and bored. REALLY BORED. Finding any way of coping kind of bored.


We were doing spring clean-up at one of our vacation homes; this one happens to be outside Bend, Oregon at Sunriver Resort. Physical distancing is easy here as it's a big property with 35 miles of walking/biking trails - which is the only reason why we felt relatively safe being here for a few days.


The story starts with a trip to the post office, which happens to be inside the local grocery store. I had two pieces of mail that needed postage (and that absolutely had to go out). I figured it would be a quick trip ... in/postage purchased/out ... 5 minutes.


Note: This particular post office also handles shipped packages - a yellow card in our PO Box says we have something to pick up.


I was masked up, my hands had been sanitized and I took my place behind perhaps 5 people. All obeying the 6' apart rule AND wearing masks; all of whom - by the yellow cards in their hands - were picking up packages. One by one they'd hand over their card, the person behind the counter would disappear into the back room and come back out with a box or two.


There was a man in front of me with a yellow card, wearing what I'm sure were his 'resort cycling' clothes. City Biker Dude in his Mountain Bike Fancy Duds. When it was his turn, he said (not so clearly and through his mask), "Evidently there's something to pick up." The person behind the counter disappeared once again and was gone FAR longer than with any of the other previous package retrievals. Like, 5 minutes longer. When she came back out, she had a cart with SEVEN boxes. Some small, some large.


City Biker Dude looked at the cart, looked at the boxes, looked at the person behind the counter and said, "Oh, there must be a mistake. Those aren't ours."

Person behind the counter: "Your address is (X) and your last name is (X)?" He nods. "These are all yours then."



Here's where it gets funny. The cart had boxes from Amazon. Nordstrom Trunk. Wayfair. Target. More Amazon. DSW Shoes and J. Crew. Clearly someone in their household had been ... ahem ... shopping.


He stood there tapping his fancy mountain biking shoe for a couple seconds and then said, "How am I supposed to get these home? I'm on my bike. And I didn't order any of this."


Clearly he was annoyed at the someone who had been curing boredom by shopping online and who, I'm quite sure, was anxious for these boxes to arrive.


THEN he said, "Well (bad word). You'll have to put them back until we can come back. No - wait - send them AAALLL back. (another bad word) No - wait - don't do that. She'll kill me. (another bad word) Jeezzzzzzuz. This is RIDICULOUS."


My way-back-when psychology training perked right up watching this unfold, and while it was really VERY funny (the person behind the counter and I laughed quite hard after Biker Dude had huffed out), it was also a commentary on human nature.


When you're on day ninety million of Stay-At-Home you've already watched all the TV you can stand, you've baked all the bread you'll ever need, you've scrolled through all the social media sites until your thumb actually hurts, and you've cleaned every closet and cupboard in the entire house. Shopping is next on the endless list of ............

WHAT CAN I DO NOW

(sorry biker dude)





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